Design of a new multi-epitope vaccine against Brucella based on T and B cell epitopes using bioinformatics methods. (25th May 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Chen, Zhiqiang; Zhu, Yuejie; Sha, Tong; Li, Zhiwei; Li, Yujiao; Zhang, Fengbo; Ding, Jianbing
• Is Part Of: Epidemiology and infection. Volume 149(2021)
• Publication Date: 2021-05-25
• Subjects: Brucella, -- multi-epitope vaccine, -- Omp22, -- Omp19, -- Omp28; Communicable diseases -- Periodicals; Epidemiology -- Periodicals; 614.4
• DOI: 10.1017/S0950268821001229
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0950-2688

Abstract

Abstract: Brucellosis is one of the most serious and widespread zoonotic diseases, which seriously threatens human health and the national economy. This study was based on the T/B dominant epitopes of Brucella outer membrane protein 22 (Omp22), outer membrane protein 19 (Omp19) and outer membrane protein 28 (Omp28), with bioinformatics methods to design a safe and effective multi-epitope vaccine. The amino acid sequences of the proteins were found in the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) database, and the signal peptides were predicted by the SignaIP-5.0 server. The surface accessibility and hydrophilic regions of proteins were analysed with the ProtScale software and the tertiary structure model of the proteins predicted by I-TASSER software and labelled with the UCSF Chimera software. The software COBEpro, SVMTriP and BepiPred were used to predict B cell epitopes of the proteins. SYFPEITHI, RANKpep and IEDB were employed to predict T cell epitopes of the proteins. The T/B dominant epitopes of three proteins were combined with HEYGAALEREAG and GGGS linkers, and carriers sequences linked to the N- and C-terminus of the vaccine construct with the help of EAAAK linkers. Finally, the tertiary structure and physical and chemical properties of the multi-epitope vaccine construct were analysed. The allergenicity, antigenicity and solubility of the multi-epitope vaccine construct were 7.37–11.30, 0.788 and 0.866, respectively. The Ramachandran diagram of the mock vaccine construct showed 96.0% residues within the favoured and allowed range. Collectively, our results showed that this multi-epitope vaccine construct has a high-quality structure and suitable characteristics, which may provide a theoretical basis for future laboratory experiments.